Stacking Stones​A Creative Craft Blog

From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.

By this point, you know deal--once a week, we take some time to enjoy great rock music and pair it with passable commentary. I'm no critic--just a fan, and this week in the Saturday Morning Soundtrack series I'm looking at a new discovery that I'm eager to share.

UPDATE 6/23: A few hours after I posted this yesterday, there was (in a freaky coincidence) an air show crash in Ohio, in which two performers lost their lives. That incident had no bearing on my choice of song--I had posted it before the crash--but I considered deleting this entry anyway, lest someone think I was tastelessly poking fun at the incident. Given how Henry's song handles its subject matter with such sensitivity and discernment, I've decided that the most impressing choice is to leave it up for right now, but I also ask that all comments reflect the solemnity of recent events.

"Ohio Air Show Plane Crash" -- Joe Henry (1996)

It's a miracle no one else thought of it first: a love song set against the backdrop of a plane crash. Think about the implications of that metaphor. And yet Henry does what any good writer does when confronted with the potential for metaphor--he takes a hands-off approach. There are no corny lines in here about the relationship crashing, or anything quite so maudlin. It's simply a song in which a young man (our narrator), happens to take his sweetheart to an air show where one of the pilots fails to pull out of his dive. Any figurative connection between the events is left to the listener's discretion. Henry's just telling a story here.

An exceptional story.

And the way he tells is equally exceptional. The guitar chugs along like a home-video reel, allowing the scene unfold in slo-mo (the way catastrophes often seem to unfold), while the Hammond organ lends depth to this track, giving it an almost sepia-toned feel until the drums kick into double time in the first chorus, bringing us back to the present. It's as glorious as it is terrifying.

What complexifies this vignette is not the crash itself, but the fact that when we reach the chorus, we discover that this is a memory narrative. Like all good narratives, it is set in a particular time and place, and it is driven by characters and their relationships to one another. Our leading man remembers the scene, sure, and hears the panicked shouts in the background, but what sticks with him most after the wool of passing years is the girl and how she looked on that day. "I will always keep you in my dreams," Henry sings, and we know he's not talking about the accident.

"Ohio Air Show Plane Crash" is a long-ish song (with a longish title--one that does a lot of work, the way poem titles often do), but it doesn't labor. In fact, that's what makes it so remarkable. Most of the story is compressed, left inferred--the entire lifespan of this relationship flashes by in the instant it takes a young woman to turn her head and notice a plummeting plane.

Love the song? Hate it? Have thoughts to share? Please, feel free to leave a message in the comments below. And, if you would like to write a Guest Entry for the "Saturday Morning Soundtrack" series where you creatively respond to one of your favorite rock songs, don't hesitate to contact mewith queries.